[quote] Why do I get the impression this would have played out differently -- and these comments might not be as cutting -- if this had happened to a couple of American skaters? Perish the thought. The tone at BalletAlert would be the least of our worries.

It would have been covered like the end of the world. Fox News would have Geraldo Rivera in Salt Lake City and the New York Post would be uncovering links between the offending judges and Bill Clinton. The Nation would show how market capitalism had ruined figure skating while the Wall Street Journal would show that only free enterprise could clean up the mess.

The New York Times would assign 37 reporters and eight editors to the story and run ten-thousand word articles with several sidebars each day. CNN would pick up the Times coverage for 15-second snippets. Sports Illustrated would pursue the American version of Jennifer Sale to be the cover girl in the next swimsuit edition.

All Congressional investigations of the Enron bankruptcy would cease so that every committee of Congress could demand testimony from everyone involved in the scandal.

President Bush would say he could not cancel his state visit to Japan, Korea and China but had temporarily relieved Condolezza Rice of all duties at the National Security Council so that she could co-ordinate an interagency task force to investigate.

John Ashcroft would announce an alert and the FBI would detain all foreign nationals involved in judging ice skating. They would be held at Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo and not be given prisoner of war status.

And the ones that voted for the Canadians were Canada, USA, Germany and Japan. Poland and China voted for a tie, numerically, with the technical scores going to S&P, and presentation scores going to the Russians. Judges are also asked to "place" the skaters, which is what counts with a numerical tie. In the case of China and Poland, they voted #1 for the Russians and #2 for S&P.

Lets just be happy that this is over now. This should be inquired into but I think that we should wait until after the olympics, so we don't hurt any of the other athletes in the process (i.e. French skaters in different catergories).